A Social Philately Project
Updated: June 2024
The era following the American Civil War witnessed a profound metamorphosis in the study of ornithology in North America. This transformation was propelled by a confluence of social shifts and technological advancements that reshaped how people interacted with nature. As society underwent significant changes, including urbanization and industrialization, people's interest in natural history surged. Simultaneously, advancements in infrastructure, transportation and communication facilitated the exchange of ideas and specimens giving rise to a proliferation in Natural History dealers and publications catering to naturalists of all levels and interests. These developments laid the foundation for the establishment of institutions such as the American Ornithologists Union (AOU) and fostered the professionalization of ornithology. They also gave conservation a new and powerful voice that helped change the way ornithology was to be conducted in the 20th century.
This philatelic presentation explores this period of ornithology through the individuals who wrote and received the covers displayed. Within the text, links are provided to other pages or sections of the site that expands on a particular individual or subject. Additional information that may not be directly relevant to the discussion is also provided in Toggle blocks, allowing the reader the opportunity to explore other aspects of the story.
All covers illustrated in this presentation are in the personal collection of the author. The organization of the presentation was inspired by the book A Passion for Birds: American Ornithology after Audubon (1998) by Mark V. Barrow, Jr.
John James Audubon (1785-1851) is recognized by many as the “founding father of American birding,” and while our story does not begin with Audubon, it does begin at the height of the Natural History Boom, during which period, in 1887, the New York Academy of Sciences appointed a committee to collect funds for a monument fitting to Audubon’s legacy to be erected over his grave. The elected chairman of this committee was Thomas Egleston (1832-1900). Egleston was a New York Academy of Sciences vice president, and the first professor of mineralogy and metallurgy (1864-1900) at the School of Mines of Columbia College (today's Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science), which he had also founded.
This cover for the Audubon Monument Committee, bearing the address of Columbia College, is addressed to Frederic Ward Putnam (1839-1915), who started his professional life as curator of ornithology at the Essex Institute in Salem in 1856. In 1864, Putnam became the first director of the Peabody Museum of Salem, and from 1874 to 1909, curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, Cambridge, where he received this cover in the 1890s.